Siliguri,
West Bengal, India, Nov 12, 2012 (Washington Bangla Radio) "Spirit of
Siliguri" is a fun song from Siliguri, to Siliguri and by the people of
Siliguri. It is the result of a sustained collaboration between people.

Joel performing with the Guildhall Folk Ensemble at Barbican Theater in London, UK

Kolkata, June 4, 2012 (Washington Bangla Radio) Shyamak Mukherjee or JOEL as we know him is a versatile young singer, song writer, composer and music arranger coming up with world-class music from Calcutta.

Joel's journey started when he had just graduated from school. While his friends were busy getting admitted to colleges for prospective careers, Joel was busy listening to the likes of Bach, Schubert, Sting and John Mayer and imagining himself making music that would define an era just like his idols had done before.

Thus the journey began as he took the guitar to be his companion for life. Having completed grade 8 in Classical guitar he wanted to move on to more contemporary forms of music and therefore started writing, composing and singing his own music. However, after watching his father, he decided to try his hand at arranging music as well.

After initializing with such rudimentary software as Fruity Loops and Cool Edit, Joel got through the nuances of digital music production soon enough. It was then that he decided that he wanted to make an album where everything would be done by him.

In this album - "The Beginning" - Joel composed, played, arranged, sang and wrote the songs, except for a few songs which are written by friends. It's an effort which took him 3 years to finalize and complete.

The album contains one Rabindrasangeet and a popular Bengali song by poet Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah. The reason for the inclusion of these two songs is that both the songs have had an impact on Joel's life at various stages and he wanted to acknowledge that by giving them a shape through his musical visualizations.

We know listeners will appreciate and enjoy what a young musician of Joel's caliber has to offer. Having been born in a family where music was just as indispensable as oxygen or food, the inclination towards the arts for Joel was quite natural. Furthermore, having studied in Patha Bhavan, Kolkata for twelve years, the nurturing was just about perfect for him to enter the realm of music.

Read all about Joel and listen to free sample of his songs from "The Beginning" via WBRi.

Washington DC, March 27, 2012 (Washington Bangla Radio) Born and raised in Kolkata Anushree Gupta grew up in a joint family amidst lots of love, lots of music and lots of poetry. Her dad was an expert Table player (though he chose to not play professionally) and her mother is a talented singer. Her grandfather has been a major inspiration for Anushree - he used to write beautiful devotional songs that she would sing with him. They spent magical moments together with music.

Read all about Anushree and her songs and listen to her beautiful texture online on WBRi.

Calcutta, Jan 15, 2012 (Washington Bangla Radio) "Dashakarma Bhandar" is a new audio CD released under the label of Purple Music in Kolkata - A WBRi partner whose albums are available for worldwide via our Digital Download service.

The album claims to be the first "breakthrough" album that breaks inter-genre barriers in Bengali music. Noted film-maker Rituporno Ghosh (interview) welcomes the amalgamation of the traditional and contemporary in the album.

There are 13 songs in the album:

· Two songs by eminent signer Raghav Chatterji (interview)
· One Atul Prasad arranged as per today’s taste by Mr. Tamal Chakraborty who is a leading arranger in Tollywood Bengali films with Srijit Mukherji's Autograph, Bollywood Hindi film Tum Mile and many others to his credit
· One Shyama Sangeet.
· Two Tagore Songs (Rabindra Sangeet)
· Four original Bengali modern songs.
· One Folk song
· One Instrumental
· And one 80’s disco style remix.Tracklist

Read all about the album and listen to the Bengali songs free online on WBRi.

Editor's Note: You may also
remember our first interview with Joy Sarkar around the time of the
release of Riingo's Bengali film "Jodi Ekdin" featuring music directed
by him available here. We also recently published a musical interview with Lopamudra Mitra where Joy also appears extempore and impromptu posted here.

Calcutta,
Aug 25, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio) We continue our series of
musical interview with Soumitra Talukdar chatting up singer-composer and
Music Director Joy Sarkar at his residence in an informal setting. Joy
talks about his career in music and breaks spontaneously into singing,
strumming his guitar, over the course of this video interview !

Joy says, “My father Sudhin Sarkar is a singer and my mother, Kalyani Sarkar
never forgot to hum a tune when she made our breakfast. They are the
reason why I am doing, what I am doing today. I probably started
recognising notes before I learned Bangla letters. It was like colour…
the world seemed to be made up of little musical notes that wafted in
the air. Music was not just a part of the world that I acknowledged to
be mine… it was the world!"

Washington DC, Aug 13, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio) Salil Chowdhury composed his first protest song as early as in 1943. A few years later he joined IPTA (Indian Peoples Theater Association) and composed numerous songs and along with the IPTA comrades he took his songs to the masses. They travelled through the villages and the cities and his songs became the voice of the masses.

These songs of protest with lyrics and music composed by Salil Chowdhury were very powerful and stimulating indeed and made people aware of the rampant social injustice and oppression that surrounded them. These mass songs became a part of the independence movement He called these songs the 'Songs of consciousness and awakening'

After extensive research for the last 12 years, Gautam Choudhury, the creator of the website www.salilda.com has published this unique collection of 12 of these rare mass songs by Salil Chowdhury. Washington Bangla Radio is privileged to bring you this album in digital download format world-wide.

These 12 songs were composed between 1944 and 1951 and refer to major political events that took place during that period. Reference to most of these songs is available in many IPTA and other publications and quite a few of the senior IPTA members who are still alive can vividly remember these songs. Without their help this recording would not be possible.

The principle singers include the members of Bharatiya Gananatya Sangha (Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association) of Kolkata with the students of Rabindra Bharati University providing the harmony. Some of the best musicians from Kolkata participated in this recording, which took nearly two years to complete.

The music is arranged by Goutam Ghosh, head of Instrumental Music, Rabindra Bharati University who knew Salil Chowdhury quite well and has an excellent understanding of his musical style.

Washington DC, July 29, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio) In this
musical video interview hosted by Soumitra Talukdar, acclaimed Bengali
singer Lopamudra Mitra chats about her background, experience and
musical career interspersed with songs in her golden voice. She is also
joined by her husband Joy Sarkar. We are confident you
will find the impromptu performances by two of the brightest stars of
Bengali music mesmerizing.

Washington
DC, July 14, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio) The prodigal Bengali and
Bollywood (and Tamil and other regional languages!) singer Anweshaa
Dutta Gupta started taking singing lessons from her mother Mita
Duttagupta when very young, and subsequently commenced her training in
North Indian Classical vocals when she was barely four years old from
her Guruji Shri Jayanta Sarkar, who she still is a student of.

In
this informal chat with Arijit Chakraborty, Anwesha talks about her
grooming in the world of music, and especially about her latest album
"RIMJHIM" which is an international production of Aninda Bose (interview) recorded in a studio in New Jersey.

Anwesha
expresses her gratitude to Debanjalee Banerjee, the composer of the
title song "Rimjhim", which she describes as a very sweet and romantic
song. Thanks to Aninda's efforts, arrangements for recording and
production were pretty complete before Anwesha arrived in New Jersey to
sing her songs in the album. Her experience of working with the
world-class musician and sound engineer (ex-bassist with Bon Jovi) Dan
Skye was, not surprisingly, excellent. When Aninda sent her the finished
tracks later, Anwesha was very impressed and thinks Dan did a great job
in mixing. She says the recording experience in a studio in New Jersey
was distinctly different from that in India - and the studio itself (Skylab Recording Studios) is in a quiet secluded "forest" as she describes.

Winner of numerous awards,
Anwesha touches upon the importance of television reality competition
shows and talent hunt programming as a platform that provides an
opportunity to showcase the abilities of aspiring young and upcoming
artists on a national (and sometimes international) level. Anwesha
points out that this audio interview is another event that is in a way
rooted to the exposure she has had in TV reality shows. She specifically
mentions "Chhote Ustaad" as a talent-hunt show that pretty much
launched her career - she immediately started getting offers to perform
playback film songs for Bengali and Hindi films and eventually Tamil and
songs in other Indian regional languages.

Anwesha considers her
recent live appearance in Nashville, Tennessee as one of her most
memorable performances. Other favorites of hers include her song "Megher
Palok Chander Nolok" from director Amit Sen's (interview)
Bengali film "Natobar Not Out" for which she recently won a Telecine
Best Playback Singer Female award (she also won the Best Title Song
award in the same ceremony for ETV Bangla show "Rojgere Ginni"). The
lyrics of "Megher Palok" are written by Kamaleshwar Mukherjee (interview) who is the director of Uro Chithi, and music composition is by Debojyoti Mishra (interview).
Anwesha's experience in recording Tamil film songs in studios in
Chennai is also very thrilling - listen to her describe that experience
in her own words!

Anwesha currently has her plate full - she is
singing a great number of songs for South Indian and Hindi movies,
including the upcoming Bollywood film "Luv U Soniyo" in which we will see the Indian cinema debut of Tanuj Virani, son of veteran Bollywood actress Rati Agnihotri.

Listen to the full interview with Anwesha audio exclusively on Washington Bangla Radio.

Washington, DC, July 14, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio) Aninda Bose is a co-composer and the producer of international Bengali modern songs album "Rimjhim" released under the label of Bihaan Music of Kolkata. Aninda talks to Arijit Chakraborty about the music album, his background and how he came about making Rimjhim with Anweshaa Dutta Gupta and Debanjalee performing the songs.

Listen to Aninda, watch the music video of Rimjhim feat. Anwesha & Debanjalee, and download the album in MP3 audio format online.

Listen to Bengali remix song Gupt Gupt (Yeke Yeke Remix) - Aksclusive Remixes by DJ Aks This song is also being aired on WBRi Live
Bengali Radio channel.

DJ AKS
is a Dubai-city born and brought up self-taught musician who started
music production in 1999. In 2005, Aks joined 2 Times MTV Immies winner
and India's No.1 Bollywood DJ
Suketu to Co-produce Music. Since 2005 they had the opportunity to work
with artists such as Adnan Sami, Salim- Suleiman, Pritam, Himesh
Reshammiya, Ishq Bector, Kunal Ganjawala, Shaan, Anushka Manchanda,
Sophie Chowdhury, Javed Ali, Sukhbir, Zubeen Garg, Mika, Mustafa Zahid,
Atif Aslam and many more.

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